


where my heart grows

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, One Shot, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23394580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: After the revolution, Connor works as one of Markus' bodyguards. During the times when Markus takes a break from work, he paints Connor.for dbhrarepairsweek "flowers" prompt!
Relationships: Connor/Markus (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 198





	where my heart grows

[ 1 ]

The first time, Connor is sitting on the sofa in the art room. His hands holding his tie, stretched out like he’s inspecting it in the sunlight, trailing a line across the vines creeping across the fabric. They shine and shimmer, metallic thread that catches the light of the sun that Markus can’t get quite right in the painting, despite all of the little bits and code in him that are helping them in every way he can.

Connor told him the tie was Hank’s. He told Markus that he was only here because Simon told him to be here. He told him that he wouldn’t affect Markus’ day in the slightest. None of which are things that Markus really believes. He phrases his words like nothing is ever his idea, like he is a quiet mouse just sitting in the back, watching over him carefully.

He’s not like that at all. Markus knows that tie. He knows it was a gift from Hank to Connor, because Connor wore it once to a fundraising event just after Christmas and Markus had taken the time to talk to everyone, and Hank had commented on how out of place Connor looks wearing something that isn’t the CyberLife suit, and doesn’t the tie make a nice difference from the one they gave him? Hank seemed so proud of himself, picking that out. Greens and reds muted against the black until they catch the light.

He knows Simon might’ve suggested the idea of a bodyguard to Connor, but he knows the two of them. The way they talk to each other conspiratorially, hiding behind shelves in the Jericho library. Markus thinks the only time he’s seen Connor smile when he was inside of the new Jericho building was when Simon was at his side. And for a long time Markus thought they were together. He found them once, slumped against each other’s sides, asleep outside in the garden by the bed of flowers. It wasn’t until a week ago, when he saw Simon with someone else, holding their hand, kissing them, that he could see the differences between that relationship and the one he had with Connor. It was written across his face. Sometimes, Markus thinks, love is like that. It is so clearly there that it would be impossible to ignore. Especially on Simon, who wears it so strongly.

And besides--

Connor cannot be ignored.

He is quiet, sure, and he does his best to stay out of the way, but there is something in the back of Markus’ head that doesn’t let him forget who is standing beside him. The only times he can feel a moment of relief around Connor is when he’s painting. When Connor is sitting on the couch by the window, looking out at the trees and the flowers in the yard or leaned back against the cushions, flipping through a book. Today his attention is drawn to his tie, and so is Markus’.

He paints the flowers on them, the vines, the fabric of it around Connor’s neck. But he adds. Vines creeping around Connor’s fingertips, flower petals falling into his lap. A pile of soft crimsons and burnt scarlets creeping up around him like a throne.

“Can I see?” Connor asks quietly.

Markus pulls his gaze away from the painting, looking to Connor, “No.”

“Oh,” he says, with a laugh. “Okay.”

“I don’t like people looking at my stuff until it’s finished.”

“Okay. I won’t.”

Markus sets his paintbrush down, picking up a different one, leaving the detailing on the vines to never finish. Then Connor won’t be able to look at it. It won’t be done. It might be on purpose, but he can still protect this piece from Connor’s eyes and it won’t be a lie.

  
  


[ 2 ]

Connor keeps looking at him. Every time he flips three pages in his book, his eyes are back on Markus, even though he’s counted out the seconds and steels himself for the moment, his brush pauses on the canvas like Connor will know that he’s painting him again. For some reason he can’t stop. Every day ends with a new piece of Connor, half painted, details missing. At some point in the process Markus either stops, thinking that it’s not right to be painting Connor like this without his permission, or he gets frustrated that he can’t get something right.

It’s usually the hair.

The one part of it that falls back down on his face. The only part of him not perfectly in place.

Today there are flowers sprouting from the spine and Markus takes the movement of Connor’s hand to turn the page but paints it further up, reaching out tentatively to touch the roses, the thorns shining bright in the light, a prick on Connor’s finger. A drop of blue blood splashed across the pages, so dark compared to the pale red of the flowers.

They’re half-finished. Markus’ brush is poised over the petals, pink paint waiting to add highlights, deep crimson still sitting on his palette ready to add shadows. But Connor is looking at him and he is trying not to look at Connor.

He must know the rhythm, too, though. Look, pause. Read, paint. Look, pause.

“What are you painting?” Connor asks, the silence breaking. The sounds of brushstrokes and page turning not filled with voices.

“Nothing.”

“Oh,” Connor says, but there is a small smile on his lips. “And it’s… pink?”

“Are you trying to play twenty-questions, Connor?” he asks. “I’m not going to tell you what it is.”

Markus sets the brush down, picks up a different one, touching it lightly to the surface of a soft blue so pale that it’ll blend right into the peachy color on the canvas, across Connor’s cheeks. He’s never seen him blush in real life before. Most androids don’t. It takes too much for that kind of reaction to become something visible. But he likes the look of it in the portrait. He likes the small smile on Connor’s face now. The kind of smile that says:

_You don’t have to tell me._

_But I’d like you to._

It makes Markus wish even more that he could stop painting him.

  
  


[ 3 ]

Markus decides it’s solely for aesthetics. Connor has a nice face. There is something about it that’s entirely too easy and too challenging to get right. There is something about it that no matter what Markus adds to the painting, it fits. He has ten portraits in his studio, hidden away for nobody to stumble upon except him. There are flowers in all of them, infected by the first day that Markus saw him wear the tie. Usually roses, which seem to lie on the same spectrum as Connor’s face does. Either being horribly ruined by Markus’ inability to get one detail right, or the petals curve perfectly the way they’re meant to. There are a few others, though. Sunflowers and lilacs. A flower crown sitting on Connor’s head as he looks up, sun streaming through the window, leaving the space behind him darkened.

Markus has gotten rid of most of them. Or at least pretended to, putting them in the pile of works that have left him unsatisfied or angry, but never to be actually destroyed. Just outside of what he thinks of when he considers his list of pieces he feels proud of.

Every day when Connor follows him into the studio, he hesitates behind the canvas, his fingers tracing the shape of Connor’s face against it and he tries to remember the last time he painted anything other than the boy sitting across from him. There was a time when Markus was struggling to find himself, when he copied the same style of Carl’s, not repeating the things he made, but bordering so similar that it would’ve been believable to put them out into the public under his name, and nobody would have known the difference. And after, when he found his own rhythm of soft colors and gradients, so focused in on the way light streamed through windows that he has at least twenty canvases all with near the same painting. The only difference now is that they include Connor, too.

It’s strange—

He remembers painting other things. The sky and the trees and the garden. Simon and North and Josh. He remembers painting the faces of strangers that he passed by on the street, smudging them away like they’ve been blurred by the rain. He painted Jericho over and over again, though that type of anger and suffering always lended itself to Carl’s style more. Heavy colors, dark blues. He remembers painting them and he looks through them late at night when Connor is gone and his new bodyguard slacks off on keeping track of his every movement.

But he doesn’t remember _how_ to paint like that. He doesn’t remember how to craft anything that doesn’t involve Connor in some splintered way. Markus tries to blame it on the fact he’s here, always sitting on the other side of the easel, leaving no space for his eyes or mind to wander but him, but he knows it isn’t true. He’s painted in the middle of the night before, when Detective Reed is the one here, slouched in the chair barely awake, and he can seem to only ever block out Connor’s face again and again.

“Wow.”

Markus drops the paintbrush, looking over his shoulder to Gavin, “What are you doing?”

“Watching you paint your little boy Connor.”

“Little boy?”

Gavin shrugs, like he’s too tired to come up with something better to call him, “You in love with him or something?”

“No,” Markus says, turning the easel away from his prying eyes. “It’s not him.”

“It looks like him.”

“It’s _not_ him.”

“Sure,” he says, walking away. “Just some other guy with stupid hair.”

“Like you?” Markus says.

“Ha ha,” he replies, picking up his jacket. “You’re very funny. I don’t get what you’re so embarrassed about. So you like him, what of it?”

“It’s not him. And I don’t like him.”

“Somewhere Connor’s feelings were just hurt very badly. You don’t even like him as a friend? He’s here all the time. He jumped on the chance to have this job. He threatened to kill me for taking the night shift.”

Connor should’ve followed through with it.

“Go back to sleep, Reed,” he replies. “Your input isn’t necessary.”

“Giving me permission to sleep on the job?” he says, pulling the jacket over him like a blanket. “How thoughtful. I might just fall in love with you, too.”

  
  


[ 4 ]

“Gavin told me you painted me,” Connor says.

Less than six hours and Connor already knows.

Markus should’ve snapped Gavin’s phone in half and refused to let him leave. He has enough money. He could’ve bribed him.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Connor shrugs, “Okay. If you say so.”

Markus nods, taking a pencil, marking out the places where he’ll put flowers, stems, leaves. Every portrait of Connor gets more and more flowers added to it. Pushed to the back or along the edges or falling from his hands or his mouth like he is overflowing with them. He wants to pretend it means something. How much Connor has grown in the time that they’ve known each other, how much Connor has changed from the moment they met, when he deviated right in front of him, breaking the single most important mission that CyberLife has ever tasked him with. And maybe it is. Maybe that’s the reason Markus adds more flowers, maybe it’s the reason he ever added them to begin with—

But he can’t tell.

The two of them have changed, but they haven’t entirely grown closer together as a pair. Connor doesn’t talk much, and when he does, it always leaves Markus off-kilter. He thought it would be the opposite, with how quiet Connor can be, but every time he opens his mouth it’s something Markus doesn’t expect. A teasing or a smile that he was hidden somewhere underneath the soft exteriors.

“But if you were,” Connor says. “It would be creepy. I know I’m your bodyguard, but it feels like you’re stalking me.”

“I—” Markus tries for words, fails. “I’m—”

“I’m teasing you,” he says, leaning back against the couch, drawing his legs up with him. “You’re so serious, Markus.”

“And you aren’t? You barely talk to me.”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to talk to you,” Connor replies. “If you’re not in meetings or doing work, you’re playing your piano or painting. I thought—”

“It’s fine,” Markus says. “We can talk.”

“Okay,” he says. “And you can paint me. If you want. I won’t tell Gavin. He’s a bit jealous.”

“Yeah?” Markus smiles. “He wants someone to paint him? Who would put themselves through that?”

  
  


[ 5 ]

“Can I pose you?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Lay down?”

“How so?”

“Just like…” Markus trails off, getting up from his chair, moving over to Connor. He has this look on his face, the same type of look that Markus has seen before. The kind of look that means he’s up to something. Like he knows more than he’s letting on.

Markus reaches a hand out gently, touching Connor’s shoulder, pushing him back against the cushions of the couch. He looks up at Markus, the look leaving his face as Markus moves his arms gently, nudging them lightly into place, where one rests of the side of the couch, where it will hold a bouquet of roses that have left a trail of petals to the couch, the other one left resting over his chest. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he reaches out to touch Connor’s face, his thumb trailing across Connor’s bottom lip, touching it lightly so Connor’s mouth parts slightly.

“Can you stay like this?” Markus asks.

“I can try.”

Markus’ hand moves to Connor’s leg and he doesn’t mean for it to be such a sexual touch, but his hand moves along Connor’s thigh slowly, resting there for too long of a moment. He could’ve just told Connor what he wanted him to do, but Connor is underneath him, watching him so intently, and it’s the first time they’ve touched since they talked in the church a year ago.

“Markus.”

“What?”

“Do you—” he clears his throat, as if it’s a need. “Do you want me to take my shirt off or something?”

“W-What?”

“You’ve probably never painted someone nude before, have you?”

“I—You’re teasing me,” Markus says quietly.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well,” Connor sits up, all of that work undone, but he’s very close to Markus now. “Simon told me you were this charming guy but you’re more of a nervous wreck.”

“So you’re making fun of me?”

“I thought one of us had to be the bold one for a change.”

“Oh,” Markus laughs. “And that’s you?”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t like that. He likes the smile that Connor is wearing, but he can be bold. He can be charming. He doesn’t remember how to do either, but it’s easy to fall back on something. So he leans forward, a hand reaching up, cupping Connor’s face, pulling him in to kiss him. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised when Connor kisses him back. He thought, for a moment, that all of his flirting and his teasing was just a joke, but then he’s clinging onto Markus, pulling him towards him. He wants to stay like that. The softness of Connor’s touch, but the eager way he pulls Markus forward—

It’s more than that brief kiss he had with North on the rooftop, before they both looked at each other like it was the biggest mistake they’d both made. Overwhelmed with the emotions of each other’s past, pulling them together. He doesn’t have that same connection with Connor, but he could. He can feel it. The flicker of it back and forth. A want that he doesn’t know how to quell.

Markus pulls away, feels Connor chase him back with another kiss that breaks off quickly.

“Sorry,” Connor whispers. “I don’t—Um.”

Markus watches the blush form across his cheeks. All of that bravado gone now. And he was right. He does like it. That little soft hue of blue on his cheeks, creeping up.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Connor laughs. “Just—You want the shirt off, right?”

Markus reaches for the throw pillow that had fallen to the floor, tossing it toward Connor’s chest.

“Yes.”


End file.
